Activists: Reinstate DEC Commissioner

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Environmentalists are calling on Gov. David Paterson to reinstate the state’s environmental commissioner, who was fired Thursday for criticizing the administration’s budget cuts.

Pete Grannis said he was fired as commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation after writing a memo saying staff reductions implemented since 2007 had left environmental programs “hanging by a thread.”

The dismissal was greeted with dismay by some of the state’s leading environmental groups, who said Grannis deserved to be applauded, rather than fired, for raising an alarm over the condition of his agency.

The New York Public Interest Research Group and several other groups held a news conference Friday to say they asked the governor to rehire Grannis. Sierra Club official Martha Holly Loew said it doesn’t make sense to fire an official who was “honest” and “reliable.

A Paterson spokeswoman, Jessica Bassett, told the Albany Times Union that Grannis would not be reinstated.

The leaked memo said the agency had lost 469 workers due to layoffs or early retirement incentives. It warned that the staffing problem would cripple the state’s efforts to clean up pollution and oversee the expected coming boom in New York’s natural gas drilling industry.